A tale of two trials.
A tale of two trials.
H amit Coskun was sentenced and fined in England this year for burning a Koran outside the Turkish consulate in London while yelling profanity-laden religious condemnations like “f*** Islam” and “Islam is the religion of terrorism.” Coskun insisted that the protest signified opposition to the Turkish president, Islam itself, and terrorists — not Muslims. Nevertheless, Judge John McGarva determined that Coskun “has a deep-seated hatred of Islam and its followers.” McGarva found Coskun guilty of a religiously motivated public order offense under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and the Public Order Act 1986, partially because “the consequences of the defendant’s provocative behaviour were that serious public disorder did break out.” During Coskun’s protest, a deliveryman passing by on a bike kicked Coskun. A second man named Moussa Kadri called Coskun a “f***ing idiot,” said he was going to kill Coskun, went inside and retrieved a knife, then physically attacked Coskun. (Coskun went to the hospital, then was arrested; the severity of his injuries is somewhat unclear.) Curiously, the judge stated that “neither of [the two attackers] appear to have any justification for the nature of their response,” so somehow Coskun both provoked and didn’t provoke the disorder. The decision was widely condemned as an attempt to resuscitate blasphemy laws — specifically blasphemy against Islam.
Thankfully, Coskun recently won his appeal. In October, Justice Joel Bennathan ruled that there was insufficient evidence to maintain that Coskun’s conduct met the thresholds for “disorderly” and “likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress.” In arriving at this sound conclusion, Bennathan noted that Coskun’s demonstration was not directed at a particular person, he protested alone for only a few minutes outside a secure location in daylight, and that other witnesses seen on video were seemingly unalarmed by the demonstration (so much so that they didn’t feel the need to run away or cross the road). The judge further acknowledged that the knife-wielding Kadri appeared “angry,” which is not equivalent to being “harassed, alarmed or distressed.” In his sentencing remarks, Bennathan acknowledged that “burning a Koran may be an act that many Muslims find desperately upsetting and offensive,” but the law does not exist to prevent people from experiencing those feelings, and “the right to freedom of expression, if it is a right worth having, must include the right to express views that offend, shock or disturb.”
Although Coskun’s appeal was victorious, it is difficult to celebrate the ruling because Coskun never should have been on trial; the existence of the case — let alone the appeal — reveals ideological corruption in the United Kingdom’s legal system, and surely the process alone has been a thorough punishment for Coskun. Honestly, I have as much enthusiasm for the court concluding that Coskun’s speech is protected as I do for the Supreme Court ruling that the sky is blue, which is to say I have no enthusiasm at all, since anything contrary would be ridiculous. And I will venture to speculate: Coskun received death threats for posting a video online of him burning the Koran before he demonstrated outside the consulate, so now that his case has been the subject of much media coverage, he has almost certainly become public enemy No. 1 in the eyes of extremists, and he likely will have to watch out for the rest of his life.
But more important, justice for Coskun has not been served. To understand why, we must look at how the court treated one of his violent attackers, Moussa Kadri.
Kadri was charged with possession of a bladed article and common assault, the latter being a mild charge that encompasses confrontations as uninvolved as spitting on someone. (And although England loves punishing people for their speech, a charge was not brought against him specifically for his death threats, and so Kadri was treated with kid gloves even before the trial began.) In his sentencing remarks, Judge Adam Hiddleston recounted the course of events, writing that “You [Kadri] were heard to issue threats to him [Coskun], calling him ‘a f***ing idiot’ and telling him that you were going to kill him. You then returned inside your property. When you came back outside, you had armed yourself with a knife and you went to confront him.” His motivation? Kadri told the police that “I wanted to protect my religion,” according to the Telegraph. The judge handed Kadri a 20-week sentence, suspended for 18 months. A suspended sentence is served in the community, rather than in prison, so Kadri will not spend time behind bars (unless he violates the terms). His punishment — if it even deserves to be called that — is to perform 150 hours of work, complete ten days of rehabilitation activity, and pay £150 in court costs.
The sentencing remarks amount to a long list of nonsensical excuses. The attack, Hiddleston says to Kadri, was an instance of “losing your temper and your self-control.” Yet Kadri was fully in control of his actions: He expressed a death threat, went inside to retrieve a weapon, then returned to physically attack Coskun — all of which shows he followed ordered and strategic thinking with the aim to inflict harm. There is no hypothetical narrative that can portray Kadri’s conduct as an instantaneous reaction in self-defense, nor is there any available evidence suggesting that he has a preexisting mental disability that impacts his decision-making capacities. If a knife-wielding man expressing a death threat is spared jail because his actions can be dismissed simply as a sudden flare of rage, then are we meant to believe that those who are in jail for knife crimes committed them soberly without losing their temper? Hiddleston’s extremely flawed view of free will has devastating consequences if applied consistently. Under this logic, “hate crimes” are not troubling if the perpetrator suffered from a sudden swelling of animosity toward a particular group, while sexual assault can be excused as just a sudden burst of erotic excitement.
However, the judge’s absurd notion of human agency does not strike me as the reason that Kadri received a light sentence. Instead, it seemingly results from glowing endorsements submitted to the court. According to the judge, a portrait of Kadri as a “loved husband and father” and “someone of hitherto exemplary character” emerged in written statements from those who “cannot praise [him] highly enough.” Hiddleston says to Kadri that “those who know you speak extremely highly of you and observe that this behaviour is totally out of character,” and suggests that it is a “tragedy” that “a man of your previous good character” is now before the court for the first time. The judge again showers Kadri with praise by mentioning his charity work. Yet Hiddleston must know Kadri isn’t an upstanding moral citizen — in part because of the attack on Coskun, and because Kadri lied to the court. Hiddleston briefly notes that Kadri “sought to mislead those investigating this case by sending a photograph of a palette knife,” rather than the actual knife he was carrying, and no additional charge was brought against Kadri for this attempt to subvert the trial. Nevertheless, Kadri was apparently such a “highly respected and valued individual” that “the effect of [his] incarceration now on others would be wholly disproportionate,” thus he will be spared prison. With this evaluation, the judge has crafted a get-out-of-jail-free card for first-time offenders whose friends own paper and ink.
These crucial letters — and any details about them — are seemingly sealed and locked inside an iron vault. After weeks of submitting freedom-of-information requests and contacting legal professionals involved in the trial, I obtained virtually no information except the following: The court received a total of eight character references on behalf of Kadri, including from “a charity trustee, his employer, two Special Constables and family members.” (A special constable is essentially a part-time, volunteer police officer.) The names of the individuals who submitted the letters, Kadri’s workplace, and charity association have all been withheld. The internet similarly proved unhelpful; I could not find a single online source that mentioned Kadri’s charity involvement, or even what charitable cause he promoted.
The Kadri case inadvertently exposes a loophole in Britain’s justice system: A collection of positive character references can diminish the punishment to the extent that it practically doesn’t exist, even when the crime is so severe that such letters should be wholly irrelevant. Moreover, there’s no reason to assume that the content of these letters is fair and accurate, especially since they can be withheld from the public and the press. (Certainly, a similar ability to submit letters supporting a defendant exists in the United States. However, I’m not aware of an instance here where character references exerted so much influence that someone evaded jail for a heinous crime. Additionally, in the United States, these letters are often in the public record and accessible, although there are exceptions.)
The consequences of this loophole cannot be overstated; considering what is effectively a letter campaign when imposing a sentence will destroy the judiciary, along with any notion of justice, in an era when identity politics reigns supreme and in-group preferences are indissoluble. It does not require effort to imagine scenarios where an LGBTQ+ organization instructs its affiliates to submit statements when a transgender-identifying perpetrator is on trial, or an imam instructing a mosque’s members to send in positive appraisals when a fellow attendee is before the court. But given the inconsistent application of rules in England, we can expect that not all letters will be treated equally. Would the court think fondly of a million letters submitted in defense of the right-wing activist Tommy Robinson? I doubt it.